March 10, 2011 | 7:35 AM | By

The Falmouth Experience: The Green Debate

FILED UNDER: Mitigation, The Falmouth Experience, wind energy

Because of its strong winds, Cape Cod is a crucial part of Governor Patrick’s plan to generate enough electricity in the state to power 800,000 homes. But as Sean Corcoran reports, the effort to install land-based wind turbines on the Cape has slowed, largely because of opposition to a turbine that was installed last spring in Falmouth. This is part four in our week-long series, The Falmouth Experience: The Trouble With One Town’s Turbine.

Liz Argo is a well-known wind advocate and consultant on Cape Cod. She videotapes interviews with people who live and work near wind turbines; here, she's seen in Hyannis Country Gardens.

Sean Corcoran/WGBH

Liz Argo is a well-known wind advocate and consultant on Cape Cod. She videotapes interviews with people who live and work near wind turbines; here, she's seen in Hyannis Country Gardens.

FALMOUTH, Mass. — Liz Argo is probably the best-known wind advocate and turbine consultant on Cape Cod. She’s been involved with proposals in Brewster, Dennis and at the high school on Nantucket. And for the past 10 years, Argo has been taking her video camera along to interview people who live and work near turbines. She says the responses are almost always positive.

Argo stands a few hundred yards from a 156-foot tall wind turbine as she interviews Diana Duffly, treasurer of Hyannis Country Garden, the first business to put up a turbine on Cape Cod.

“Why don’t you start looking at it and turn back to me and tell me, ‘Since we put it in we had this issue, that issue, this good thing, that bad thing…” Argo says.

Wind One rises up over the trees in one Falmouth neighborhood, creating a shadow-flicker that has caused neighbors there to complain. Other Falmouth residents report health problems caused by the turbine's noise.

Jess Bidgood/WGBH

Wind One rises up over the trees in one Falmouth neighborhood, creating a shadow-flicker that has caused neighbors there to complain. Other Falmouth residents report health problems caused by the turbine's noise.

Duffly begins: “We installed the turbine, it went online in 2009.”

But since that installation two years ago, Argo says the wind debate has shifted on the Cape. “What happened in Falmouth has very definitely made doing any well-sited wind project nearly impossible right now on Cape Cod,” Argo said.

Last spring, the town of Falmouth turned on the first of two 400-foot turbines at its wastewater treatment plant in a quiet, wooded area of west Falmouth. And, almost immediately, some residents began to complain. Neighbors say noise from the turbine causes headaches and wakes them up at night.

Argo and members of a wind advocacy group called the Cape and Islands Wind Information Network were skeptical, and they went to talk to the neighbors. “Meeting with those people quite honestly blew our minds,” Argo said. “We had expected that they would be kind of wacky. And we would be able to dismiss them. And none of us will dismiss their complaints now.”

As communities on Cape Cod consider wind proposals, and a county-wide planning committee considers new siting standards, Falmouth has loomed large in the discussions. Before the 1.65-megawatt turbine was turned on, there were virtually no Cape Codders with experience living near a turbine of that size. Turbine complaints came from mostly far-off places such as Europe and New Zealand. Now people from Falmouth have their own experiences, and their stories are impacting debates in other communities.

Barry Funfar lives about 1,600 feet from Falmouth’s turbine. He says he travels to other towns to talk about the aches and the pressure he feels in his head when outside in his yard. “When I went up to Plymouth, I said, I kind of feel like Paul Revere coming up here to warn you what it is like living by one of these,” Funfar said.

Wind advocates like Argo seem to be distancing themselves from the Falmouth project. While they point out that the turbine is an older one that was in storage for several years, they question its location just a few hundred yards from neighbors. “What went wrong in Falmouth I think, unfortunately, (is that) those turbines probably didn’t belong in that neighborhood,” Argo said.

If Argo is the most recognized pro-wind advocate on Cape Cod, then Eric Bibler, of the group WINDWISE, is likely the most visible opponent. Bibler says that what’s happening in Falmouth could happen in any town. And that the response to Falmouth should not be to simply call it an anomaly. “What we constantly hear in these other projects is this is not about Falmouth, that Falmouth is unique,” Bibler said. “That Falmouth is bad technology.”

Last week, Falmouth officials told neighbors they’re willing to shut off the turbine when winds hit higher velocities. But Bibler says the only real solution may be to compensate the neighbors. “They may just have to buy these people out, which is not what they want. They don’t want to move. They just want their lives back.”

It took eight years of town discussion before Falmouth’s first turbine went online last spring. The delay wasn’t because of heated opposition. Instead it took state and federal grants and incentive programs to make community wind economical.

Cities and towns across the state are now interested in turbines as a way to get stable energy prices with reduced environmental impacts. But on Cape Cod, what’s called the “Falmouth experience” has left a string of turbine proposals in limbo.

Don’t miss extended interviews with Liz Argo and Eric Bibler.

More from this series:

  • MJ

    As the situation with ‘Energy’, governments have changed policy platforms and have been pressing to claim ways to ‘power the globe’. The wind industry has, like so many other power industries, corrupted the policy makers, as well as simple minded proponents. The profound question inspired by this piece ought be, “what the hell is going on in US Government that would promote an industry that would expose the citizenry to potential harms to their health and well being?”

    The raised brow of the public reader shouldn’t be at the victims ‘under the blade’. Nor should finger pointing be toward Falmouth town governance. Everyone (Selectmen down to the neighbor), from the on-line news articles, seemingly is asking questions. Here in lies the outrage.

    The US Environmental Protection Agency is filled with lots of good people. Why aren’t they conducting research and providing guidance standards for the implementation and siting of industrial wind turbines? Why should the impacted public be doing the heavy lifting concerning their safely and protection? In the old days, studying political science in school, it was taught that our government (federal, state & local) protects it’s people.

    Politics have changed but that old concept is more vital than ever. I understand trade-offs are part and parcel of the political dance. Trade-offs require, if history proves accurate, that ethical correctness, at it’s smallest denominator, must guide compromise.

    When past or a current President tells it’s bureaucracy, don’t investigate, research or review the complaints from Falmouth, Vinalhaven ME, Wisconsin or Illinois, this begs the question, “Who is being protected”?

    The raised eye brow should no longer be about the trade-off between victims ‘under the blade’ in Falmouth and the noble attempt of holding in-check climate change for universal good. The trade-off more likely in action is the sacrificing of a minority for expediting industry progress. Wind industry progress for profit.

    The smallest common denominator in this ethical conundrum is the citizen. There is much information Falmouth citizens could offer to the federal and state departments of environmental protection.

    Simply. Why aren’t those agencies asking the questions? Have we, as a society, arrived at a point where the public administers no consequence for dereliction of duty?

  • Lisa

    The situation in Falmouth certainly is not unique! All across America and in Europe, individuals who have had the misfortune of having wind turbines sited too close to their homes are experiencing similar serious health effects as well as plummeting property values. On Vinalhaven, in Maine, nearby neighbors who are sensitive to noise are living an equivalent nightmare. Unfortunately, the developer, Fox Islands Wind, and the local utility have not responded with the same compassion as Falmouth selectmen. Vinalhaven wind farm neighbors who complained about the noise have been marginalized and described as “naysayers” by the developer and some vocal community members. Let’s hope other community’s follow in Falmouth’s shoes: publicly acknowledge the problem, provide immediate relief from the noise, and look for a resolution that is fair. One has to agree with Eric Bibler’s point of view, that considering all that these turbine neighbors have lost, the least they can expect is financial reimbursement so that they can afford to move and start all over again. In order to have wind energy be a viable option in the US, irresponsible turbine siting is a crime in that making that needs to addressed now, not only on a local level, but also on a state and federal level.

  • Liz Argo

    This week’s natural disaster in Japan has become terrifyingly complicated by man’s use of nuclear devices to produce electricity. The coincidence of the Japanese nuclear catastrophe coming at the end of the WGBH/WCAI piece on wind should not be lost on the NPR audience. Despite the reports from the 12 people suffering from noise in Falmouth where an older stall-regulated turbine was installed, the overwhelming majority of people in the region living right next to more modern wind turbines (Hull, Portsmouth, Bourne) – and the majority of people in Falmouth itself- find wind to be a terrifically benign, welcome, and economic source of electrical power. Let us not lose sight of this greatest of facts about wind energy: wind turbines are safe and economic. To many of us the “threat” of wind is far preferable to the real threats we live with everyday due to our continued preference for fossil fuels & nuclear power, which bring mercury poisoning, asthma, oil spills, and nuclear meltdown.

  • Anonymous

    This is just fear-mongering at it’s best to bring up Japan’s crises in relation to our own energy woes.
    Depending upon the money raised by any utility, any town could still wind up with the “older” (4 year old) technology as the stall regulated machines are still manufactured, and be stuck with them for the life of the lease (15-20 years.)
    Wind turbines are neither safe nor economical in all cases. Safety is all relative when noise, infrasound, ice throw and fires are concerned. And if these do become issues, as they have in so many towns around the world, then they are also not economical when they are turned off at times of high wind speeds and flicker.

    The biggest problem that I see is that again we are passing off the responsibility of cleaner energy onto the backs of the people who live near the turbines. They are the ones who are supposed to sacrifice for the greater good.
    And yet, the government still gives subsidies to oil companies who already have billions in profits – why not give those subsidies to homeowners for their own solar or geothermal projects? Lobbyists are at this very moment in Washington trying to take the teeth out of clean air and clean water laws, which again pass the buck from larger energy providers to individuals. The auto makers have for decades whined and complained that they can’t possibly make cars cleaner or more efficient – until they have to or until competition comes from where? Japan!
    Responsibility needs to be placed back onto the biggest offenders and not on the little guys.